The last few weeks, heck the last month have been really really eventful. It has also been a really special time for me so I want to share as much of it with you as I can. I'm gonna start from the back and work my way forward. One picture is apparently worth 100 words, so I'm gonna try to show all the fun through many many pictures to spare you the pain of having to read a post the size of a small novel. I hope you'll be able to feel some of the joy we've had these last weeks.
It all started with our “week of fun”. During this week none of the highschoolers had school, and as it was also going to be the last full week that all of us volunteers (Neal, Rachel, Lauren, Alicia, and I) would be together, we decided to plan something special for every evening. During most weeks we aren't really able to spend a lot of time with the kids, especially the highschoolers who, are gone almost all day at school, so this was a really awesome week, probably the best one I've had here yet. I was able to spend the mornings and afternoons just hanging around with the older kids (who I also get along with best) and doing various chores together and spend the evening doing something special with everybody. It actually already started off on Sunday with an epic water fight, fought initially with water balloons then buckets of water, and finally mud. I happened to be the target of a few of our biggest boys, who are able to run long distances very quickly with full buckets of water and so I got completely soked.
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| Chantria and Nyt |
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| Watch out Manglee! |
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| Bunhouen, Englim, and Wut |
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| No one was spared |
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| Chanda and Lisa (Ream's niece) |
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| Neal and Tee mean business |
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| Chi filling up a bucket of water probably meant for me |
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| Me chasing him with mud |
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| And getting him in the very end |
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| Neal, Rachel, and I |
The next event was a marshmellow-roasting campfire behind the house. Neal especially set up a fire pit and the older kids helped carve sticks for roasting (which were pieces of very hard bamboo whittled to a very dangerous fine point, I kept waiting for some of them to poke eachother's eyes out, but the kids are actually really responsible, and heck a lot more coordinated than I was as a kid).
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| Nop surrounded by leathal weapons |
We sang songs together, roasted marshmellows, made smores, and of course tried to burn eachother's marshmellows all under a bright full moon... It was a great kick-off for the rest of the week.
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| Me with Yong |
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| Thea enjoying one of many marshmellows |
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| Me with Bo (correctly pronounced M'bo) and Bunhouen |
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| Me with Chi, my former enemy and now friend |
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| Me with Chow (and yes I am intentionally looking this wierd) |
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| Sorya, Vaneck, Roath, and Chantria |
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| Nop, one of the cutest kids ever |
The next day was “capture the flag”-day. We've played it a few times on our property before, but it's always just been two teams in a field seperated by a line. Having read one too many fantasy books and having staged to many mock battles with my friends as a child I had the dream of something bigger....
Lauren and I created the ultimate “capture the flag”. There were 4 team with different colour bandanas and war paint. The game was stage in the rice fields surrounding the orphanage. Each team got a rice field which was marked by a big flag of their colour in the middle. They also each got 3 (or was it 4?) flags which they had to protect. They goal was to have the most flags at the end of the game. The best part was probably getting ready for the game, organising the teams, tying the bandanas on the heads, putting war paint, and teaching them how to do a typical Indian war whoop (I am aware of course that it probably did not remotely resemble a real Indian war whoop, no disrespect meant).
We all marched off to our fields, and the game begann! That was actually the most exciting part, as due to a few mistakes in the planning on our part, it was pretty bloody hard to find those durned flags, and there wasn't much else you could do. Most of the kids however did enjoy it, and so we tweaked the rules and played an improved version of it the next day which worked quite a bit better. Suprisingly enough there weren't any serious injurys either though I was involved in a collision poetically described by the kids “like and elephant hitting an ant” (I am the ant in this comparision, the elephant was Channee) . It was a lot of fun being outside and doing something new with all the kids (even the boys who are usually too cool for school participated), and my team won the secound evening!
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| Getting everything organised |
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| Thea, Tee, Savouen with Hua in the back |
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| Negotiating a treaty |
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| Chanda, the smallest member of my team |
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| Rosa, who is as pretty as her name, but don't let her looks fool you, she's one tough nut |
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| Chow, one of the boys I am closest to |
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| Sorya and Roath |
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| Yong the bandit |
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| Alicia my best non-Cambodian friend here, who is gone for 3 months now... |
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| Chantria, guarding her team's last flag (hehehe we got the other two) |
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| We played until the sun set.... |
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| ....and until the moon had risen |
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| Blue polka dots on red background won the first night, Hua with their war spoils |
Friday was a holiday for everybody and we planned a big day trip to nearby lake early. However late the night before one of our kid's grandfather and member of our church died and so we all had to (or better said had the privelage to be invited to) go the funeral in the morning before we could leave for the lake. It was riding to the funeral that I kinda managed to fall off my bike and skin a good portion of skin off the heel of my hand as well as bash up my thigh and heel.
After the funeral the kids all crowded into a truck and we into a van (yeah I felt a little cowardly about it) and we all headed out to the lake.
We had rented a small hut built on stilts a few meters out into the lake that somehow managed to fit around 50 people in it. I was actually quite nervous about swimming around in the rather dirty water with an open wound on my hand, but couldn't handle the thought of sitting out all the fun, so I just went for it. I really see it as God's working that I didn't get any kind of infection and that it healed realtively quickly. The kids (and I of course too) had a really great time playing around and just chill'n.
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| How many can fit in? |
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| Borin enjoying our lovely picknick |
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| Nyt |
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| Wut |
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| Tong |
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| Channee and Tee |
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| Darrow |
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| Trying to pose for the picture |
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| and just laughing |
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| Lauren and I |
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| and Chi (hihi it rhymes) |
We went to the funeral again when we got back (funerals here go on for a long time, this one here lasted for 3 days). It was a pretty significant event as it was, as I believe, one of the first or the first Christian funeral in the area. Lots of Christians here will bend to the peer-pressure of the families when it comes to weddings, and I believe also funerals, and go for the Buddhist version. It really testified of this man's and his wife's faith that his funeral was Christian. Then the next morning I headed out to one of our staff's wedding which I will talk about in......my next post!
Peace and Love
Sarah
